A loving nurse, unless he has been wholly reduced to a little child, never brings the little child forward to a perfect man; and so then he thins his voice, sets out his words, acts by nods, lays aside his understanding, softens his inward parts, casts off his strength, loosens his limbs, slows his step, longs not to walk but to crawl; he pretends to laugh, feigns to fear, lies in weeping, because in him piety is a lie, to have played the fool is prudence, weakness is virtue. This I think blessed Paul did, when he says: 'I became a little one in your midst, as a nurse cherishing her children' (1 Thess. 2). But perhaps someone may be astonished when he sees a nurse doing these things: he does not mock if he is a parent; if he is a father he does not marvel; he who knows how to love cannot call this folly.
Wherefore I beseech you who are now fathers, now strong, now prudent, to allow me to render to the little ones of my Lord the dutiful services of nurture: and today to bring forth words more suited to endearments than to expertise; not to square my discourses but to make them liquid, and to pour them into tender throats after the manner of milk, the Apostle teaching, 'I gave you milk to drink, not solid food' (1 Cor. 3); to change my voice, to love varied affections, and — what more? — to be occupied in mind, heart, and body with the feeble minds of little ones. But now I address you, the holy shoots of the Church, with the prophetic word: 'Come, sons; hear me' (Ps. 33) — nay rather, through me and through my voice, hear the commands of your true Begetter, because through my mouth God calls you. 'Come, sons.' Whither, come? and to what?
'The fear of the Lord,' he says, 'I will teach you.' And who should come to fear? He who wills life, he who desires to see good days; he who wills to do good and to flee evil; he who, after the conflict of flesh and spirit, desires to obtain the rest of divine peace. 'Come, sons; hear me: the fear of the Lord,' he says, 'I will teach you. What man is he who wills life and desires to see good days? Keep your tongue from evil, and your lips that they speak no guile.' Now as crimes vitiate the conscience, so guile pollutes the lips, curses defile the tongue; and so one polluted in lips and tongue cannot confess to God. And since 'with the heart it is believed unto righteousness, with the mouth confession is made unto salvation' (Rom.
10), sanctify your hearts, cleanse your lips, justify your tongue, that the voice, bearer of faith, may proceed from a pure breast with every example of holiness. 'Seal yourselves.' We are taught, even in human contract, that a pact or covenant which holds the hope of what is coming or of what is future is called a 'symbol'; yet a doubled document always confirms that symbol between two, and in the stipulation human caution renders it secured, lest treachery — ever hostile to contracts — creep upon anyone or deceive anyone. But this is among men, among whom fraud, either by whom it is done or against whom it is done, always harms; but between God and men the symbol of faith is confirmed by faith alone: it is entrusted not to letters, but to the Spirit, and committed to the heart, not to paper:
because the divine deposit needs no human security. God knows not how to commit fraud, cannot suffer it, because he is not shut out by time, is not overcome by age, is not deceived by concealment; he sees hidden things, holds what is stolen, possesses what is denied. To God his own reckoning is always safe, because that which he has entrusted has no place to perish; whereas if it perishes to a man, not to God, it perishes to the one who denies, it does not perish to the one who lends it out. But you say: What is it that he who cannot be deceived demands a pact? Why does he seek a symbol? He seeks it for your sake, not for his own; not because he doubts, but that you may believe. He seeks a symbol, because he who comes to your lot does not disdain to come to your contract; he seeks a symbol, because he who always himself lends all things, wishes them to be owed;
he seeks a symbol, because he now summons you not to the reality but to faith, and through a present pact draws the future and invites you to gain. This the Apostle recalls when he says: 'From faith unto faith' (Rom. 1). And elsewhere: 'The just lives by faith' (Heb. 10). Let no one therefore be unmindful of the symbol, let no one be forgetful of the pact entered with God; let no one, when he has just received faith, demand the reality; when he has come to hope, let him not complain that he does not at once receive what was hoped. Hear the Apostle saying: 'By hope we were saved; but hope that is seen is not hope; for what a man sees, why does he hope for it? But if we hope for what we do not see, we await it with patience' (Rom. 8). Hope tends toward things future, faith transmits us to things promised;
when the realities have come, when the promises have arrived, hope ceases, faith stops. Sweet is the letter, but only until he comes who sent it; necessary is the bond, but only until the repayment of the debt; welcome are the flowers, but only until one comes to the fruit. But the presence of the sender blots out the letter, payment tears up the bond, the flowers are consumed by the fruit. And therefore know yourself now by faith to be designated son of the heavenly Father, heir of God, coheir of Christ, sharer of the heavenly kingdom, confessor of the divine judge, inhabitant of heaven, possessor of paradise; know that you have been advanced now by hope, not by the reality. And therefore receive faith, hold hope, say the symbol, that you may be able to attain to the reality and to those good things which we have foretold. 'Seal yourselves.'
Today, O man, your soul has been presented to God. 'I believe in God.' Long before, it said 'God,' but knew him not; it called upon 'God,' but was ignorant of him; ignorant surely of him whom it sought in such a way through stones and wood. Let it therefore say now, let it say: 'I believe in God the Father almighty.' Long, when it saw stones, it did not see whom to believe: but there is truly a God, who granted you to see by not seeing, whom the gods of the nations had made you not to see by seeing. Hear the Lord saying: 'For judgment I came into this world, that those who see not may see, and those who see may become blind' (John 9). 'I believe in God the Father.' There is piety in God, there is ever affection in God, fatherhood remains with him; believe therefore that the Son always was, lest you blaspheme that the Father was not always.
But you say: If he begot, how did he always have the Son? How did he beget? You who so inquire deny the faith which you profess. You said, 'I believe': if you believe, whence comes 'how'? For 'how' is the word of one doubting, not of one believing. You said, 'I believe in God the Father almighty': if there is something he cannot do, he is not almighty; but you think he begot the Son out of something, whom you confess to have made all things out of nothing — out of something, surely, if out of time; but if the Father does not contain time, the Son knows no beginning. But how wretched, that you should make him temporal who granted you to be everlasting! Not, therefore, by a conception of time, nor by a suffering of the inward parts, but as Father the Son does he beget, while he reveals to us. 'And in Christ Jesus his only Son our Lord.'
Attend, O man, with what reverence faith is instilled and handed to you: hear the Father, that you may perceive, understand, believe — not scrutinize — the Son; and that you may confess that he is, not, as a rash investigator, inquire whence and when and how he is. Hence it is that, in order to announce the Father to you, the heavenly word at once transmits you with your whole mind to Christ, to Jesus, to the Son, to our only Lord, so that, when you have seen that you can neither attain nor estimate nor grasp those things of his which are human, you may not dare to touch those things of his which are divine. 'Because he was born of the Holy Spirit from the Virgin Mary.' Come, O man — if indeed you are a man — advance with your heart, rise up with your mind, expand in your senses, sharpen the points of your genius, rouse the powers of your knowledge;
whatever of reason is in you, rouse it, examine, discuss, search out, and now, in an astounding manner, open up by yourself what it is that the Spirit generates, the Virgin conceives, the Virgin brings forth, and remains a virgin after the birth; how the Word becomes flesh, God becomes man, man is translated into God; how the cradle holds him whom heaven does not hold; how he is carried on the shoulders who sustains the whole world; why he who made all things, established the universe, governs all, willed to be born of you, to be ruled by you, appointed to be nurtured, that he might live with you as parent, whose servitude he had before despised.
And if you could reach into this from the treasury of the Godhead and bring it forth from the secret of the deity, then approach further within, ascend higher, gaze more freely, and then, as a new explorer, a singular discoverer, a betrayer of the Godhead, set forth the times of the Father, the beginnings of the Son. Be greater than Isaiah, who said: 'As a sheep he was led to the slaughter, and as a lamb before its shearer without voice, so he opened not his mouth; in humility his judgment was taken away; his generation, who shall declare?' (Isa. 53). Whose? The generation of him who as a sheep was led to the slaughter. If Christ's human generation existed, if the divine — and if, as he is begotten, it cannot be told — then what wave, O man, what flood, has borne you to this shipwreck?
what spirit has driven you to flit through the air unto ruin? Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are one Godhead, one power, one eternity, one majesty: but whatever the Son is diminished, receives, increases, belongs to my body, not to his own substance. Or do you marvel, O man, that he calls upon a Father in heaven who deigns to have a mother on earth?
'Who under Pontius Pilate was crucified and buried.' Why, O man, do you accuse him who in himself is equal to the Father, only for this — that he willed to be less in you? — him whom you hear standing before the seated Pilate, being judged with Pilate presiding; why do you take offence at this alone, that he was handed over to accusing criminals, condemned by the sentence of a defendant? But he willed to be born of your flesh, willed to be busied at your breasts, to lie on your bosom, willed to be carried on your shoulders, he who always willed to be loved by you, not feared. Ask what he first commanded in the law, and what he then sought in grace; then you will see. When the Lord was asked, as the evangelist says, what was the first commandment in the law, he said:
'You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart, and with your whole soul, and with your whole mind' (Matt. 22); hence it is that he came to your heart and to your mind, because from the beginning he sought to be loved by you with soul, heart, and body. 'Who under Pontius Pilate was crucified and buried.' Thus far the Jew; the heretic follows: let him wait. Let none who are fed and fattened on the injuries of Christ approach to their earlier matters. But you, little sons, hear, that after the sorrow of the passion of death and of the burial, you may put to flight with the joys of resurrection. 'On the third day he rose again,' that the resurrection of our body might be the power, grace, and benefit of the Trinity. 'He ascended into the heavens,' through me, who through himself never was absent from heaven. 'He sits at the right hand of the Father.'
By the order of divine power, not of human honour. We have said: the Son so sits at the right hand that the Father never sits at the left. 'Thence he shall come to judge the living and the dead.' And what does the judge owe to death? Hence it is that he rises, that he may owe it. 'I believe in the Holy Spirit.' Him in whom he believes, he denies, who denies the Holy Spirit. 'In the holy Church.' Because the Church is in Christ, and Christ is in the Church; he therefore who confesses the Church has confessed himself to have believed in the Church. 'The remission of sins.' Grant pardon to yourself, O man, by believing, you who have slipped into all sins by despairing. 'The resurrection of the flesh.' This is the whole document of faith:
If you believe that the flesh, which has been corrupted, which has putrefied, which has perished, can through God rise again, be restored, and return, then, when you confessed Him to be almighty, you swore that He can do all things. 'Life everlasting.' Well did he add 'life everlasting,' that he who rises again through Him might believe that he will himself rise again—He who lives and reigns with God the Father and the Holy Spirit, now and always, and through the immortal ages of ages. Amen.